Alpha Zed
by Malimillions
Summary: The smallest details of ones life can make the greatest difference... especially when suddenly altered.
1. The Trouble with Plain Existance

Deep in the bowels of the safest magical place on earth, he sat tinkering with on eof the odd instruments that were always in motion on his desk. They all that their purposes, decorative or no. But for all of the variety they served, both physically for decoration as well for their purpose, they all now shared acommon trait: they were all going berserk.  
  
They had apparently seemed to pick up some odd signal that made their usual monitoring of the magical energy around them in the world go completely off the charts. He knew this could mean something incredible was happening, and whether it was bad or good was yet to bedetermined.  
  
He had learned and knew well enough by now that magic moves in strange and unpredictable ways, and very few undertood it, and ever fewer could correctly predict its movements, much less anything at all. He understood it. And could use his vast experience on the subject to correctly predict its movements.... hopefully. But he had never, ever seen something like this before. The recorded energy readings were picing up something that contained the most amazing properties: the bending of time and reality itself.  
  
Different realities exist in pleanty in the known magical world; and witches and wizards cross through them. They also divided the muggle world and the wizarding world from each other. But the intentions of this massive force seemed more focused not on the bending of the realities, but on the twisting of time.  
  
Therefore, great things could be permentently changed by the smallest of tweaks here an there, at the whim of whatever, or more imporantly, whoever was behind this time-alter force.  
  
And unfortunitely he had a good idea of exactly who was behind it, and a pretty good iea of what kind of effects they could bring forth with their temperment.  
  
"Muggles have their computer viruses, we wizards and witches just have to wait and see what the most powerful sorcer of the century will do when he gainst absolute control over all that is now and what has gone before." He paused, scratching his long beard, deep in contemplatin of the effects of Voldemorts attack. "And after," he added in afterthought.  
  
He sat back down at his desk, done with checking that his insturments were actually perdicting what he though they were and not on self-distruct path instead. Lacing his fingers together, he touched his trusty wand uncertainly, then with a sigh, turned the loudspeaker on.  
  
"Will all the present staff of Hogwarts please come to m office immediately."  
  
It wasn't a question.  
  
With another deep, calming breath he turned the loudspeaker off, he waited patiently for all the alarmed staff and resident professors to finish scrambling up the stairs to his office before swiveling in his chair and turning to face them.  
  
"People," Dumbledore began a bit uncertainly. "We have a bit of a problem." They all looked confused. Their headmaster was notorious for making things run smoothly for years, and they didn't think he was about to stop now. "Boldemort is still at large, apparently." he waited a moment for all the staff that were not already aware of this to stop gagging for breath. The rest waited, some holding their breath, caught in the urgency of the moment.  
  
"And he is now messing with the essence of time...." Progessor Magonagall and Professor Snape looked at each other uncertainly.  
  
"So?" Professor Trewlony interjected. "What's so drastic about that?" she asked impatiently, not bothering to use her usual misty voice.  
  
"Shouldn't you know?" Professor Magonagall asked unpleasently, sneering at the so-called 'Seer'.  
  
"But what is his purpose? What could he possily want that's in the past?"  
  
Professor Flitwick piped up from his tiny height, effectively cutting off another infamous argument between the two professors.  
  
"In theory he could alter the past to resore his former forces, not to mention to return to his old height of power...." Dumbledore stated, cleaning his spectacles. The rest gulped. But we're expected that. He's evil, but... He could've done that all earlier if he chose."  
  
"Yes, then... why is he bothering with it now?"  
  
For a long time there was silence. It was till summer, but thankfully it was cool in the Headmaster's office. The suns beams moved slowly in the late afternoon light.  
  
"There must be something he wants." Dumbledore breathed at last.  
  
"Or someone." Professor Snape said, looking Dumbledore straightin the eye, making the older wizard stiffen as the meaning behind the Potion Master's words sunk in.  
  
"Oh, shit." The headmaster finally admitted uncharteristically, catching on.  
  
"Uh-huh." Snape agreed. The rest could only stare in bewildered silence. 


	2. Static

Harry quietly recovered after having the wind thoroughly knocked-out of him, shirting slightly, or trying to, after Uncle Venon and Dudley sat down on either side of him and changed the channel with bored expressions. The program quickly was changed from the Discovery Channel's owl documentary Harry hade been watching. Harry sighed and allowed his eyes to glaze over while watching some American program about answering moronic questions and winning millions of dollars. The air seemed to still as the tv, blaring incoherently, projected and dizzying amount of pointless images awhirl to the rest of the unmoving room. Dudley and Uncle Dursley settled down on the rest of the couch, making even the over-stuffed cushions wheeze. Harry let out a long, depressed sigh.  
  
Only one more month to go before he could go back to Hogwarts.  
  
Harry continued to stare into oblivion, ideally thinking about writing either Hermione or Ron... both of whom he had not yet heard from. But who could blame them? Knowing Hermione, she was probably on some exotic trip and learning all she could while she was there, and Ron, well he could be traveling someplace too to visit his older brothers-- Charlie who was researching dragons in Romania, or Bill who was working in Gringotts in Egypt... and if he wasn't, he was already had three older brothers still living at home and a younger sister to keep him well occupied; especially with dodging Fred and George. Harry allowed himself a small smile before resuming his 'bored beyond belief' expression as he quickly reviewed all that had gone on for the past year at Hogwarts-- all the things he had learned, the fights Hermione and Ron got in, the fights Ron and he got in, the exciting Quidditch games, the yearly grand adventure that he always seemed to get in with Voldemort... he even hissed his few and yet frequent enough clashes with Malfoy, which in itself was almost pathetic. He was about to stifle a yawn when something, a sensation totally alien, seized him. It felt like... It felt like...  
  
It was like he was being ripped apart and sucked inward at the same time. It wasn't painful, yet he was spinning into oblivion, melting through the floor like breaking the surface of the water and sinking into the depths, yet the walls of the house breaking and crashing down on him at the same time... Being sucked into a wormhole and flipped inside-out while flying solidly through space at dizzying speeds....  
  
He could barely acknowledge the presence of Dudley, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia who had come skidding into the room, their faces quaking with fear, then leaping back as he fell onto the floor, the outline of his body dulling and becoming fuzzy while he flickered in and out, disappearing and reappearing, like bad static on the tv.....  
  
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!"  
  
And it was over.  
  
And it was over. All over for now.  
  
He awoke some time later, still lying face down, but this time sprawled on top of his bed, the faces of Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon peering at him, still fearful in expression, coming into focus. There was a moment before any of them spoke, Aunt Petunia so shaken that she couldn't say a thing if she wanted to, Uncle Vernon trying to think of something vaguely appropriate or threatening to say, and for Harry, there was nothing to say for him anyway, so he didn't bother with the effort. Until finally...  
  
"You okay there, Harry...?" unused to a worried note in Vernon's voice, Harry sat up abruptly in surprise. And lost his lunch. 


	3. Flicker

Several days after the incident involving Harry "blinking in and out of focus" in the living room on that fateful afternoon, the Dursley house had returned to it's relative normality scale, even if it had to be reminded once and a while, and in Harry's case, more often with force than what was usually accustomed to be necessarily. Life went on, forcefully smoothing out the wrinkles of bizarreness that Harry's little fiasco had created. After the event was successfully smoothed over, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had gone back to just barely tolerating him, and Dudley still tore out of the room at the very sight of him. Not that that was a bad thing, of course.  
  
Harry should have known it was too good to last.  
  
It all came rushing back, quite literally, at the worse possible time for that particular week. Or, worse yet, for that entire miserable summer. It all happened at a big company picnic/potluck sort of thing for Uncle Dursley's company, Grunnings, which made drills, trying to interest a smaller company, (which had been invited to this grand event) for business. The weekend lawn party took place at a local park, where several of the small businesses of interest was invited as well as the grand total population (a hundred or so) of the employees of Grunnings present. Before the actual lunch part of the party started, everyone was seated in rather rickety, metal fold-out chairs in front of a small elevated platform equipped with a microphone where Vernon Dursley now stood, clearing his throat gruffly, with rather excitable Aunt Petunia and Cousin Dudley in the corner of the raised platform, and Harry standing more or less out of sight, but still standing near enough to the platform and his relatives that he could still be loosely associated with them if someone bothered to ask. It was all going as smoothly as planned (which was pretty smooth), with Uncle Vernon droning on and on into the microphone, the audience sitting idly in their arguably uncomfortable chairs, and Aunt Petunia beaming in the corner and periodically strangling Dudley with hugs on the platform. The whole event was going far too smoothly for the likes of Harry Potter to be involved, whether it was his intention or not.  
  
Stifling a yawn, his emerald green eyes snapped open with surprise as his muscles sort of froze up and... and...  
  
Instead of fazing in and out and seeming to implode and stretch all at once, he simply just disappeared. But as I mentioned earlier, "just" is never a good word for describing Harry Potter. The actual time that Harry "disappeared" was only a couple of seconds, but the brief time period that he was gone was more than enough to create sufficient amount of damage. His disappearance wasn't noticed, but his reappearance certainly was.  
  
There was an almost audible pop in the air and he fell down on something that was not uncomfortable. Slowly, he opened his eyes. He found himself staring into the very surprised face of a familiar girl just a year older than he in school.  
  
Harry Potter had spontaneously appeared in the air and had fallen two feet in descent onto the lap of Cho Chang's, who happened to be the only daughter of the man who headed the main company of interest to Grunnings at Uncle Vernon's business party. Naturally, all chaos immediately erupted.  
  
Ten minutes later, the entire event abandoned, Aunt Petunia was trying unsuccessfully to get Dudley safely in the Dursley company car, and Uncle Vernon was frantically apologizing to the Changs.  
  
"You see, my nephew Harry.."  
  
"Harry what?" Cho asked, suddenly taking interest in the mystery boy who had landed in her lap minutes before. After all, you usually didn't have boys with amazingly bright green eyes popping in your lap suddenly at large muggle gatherings.  
  
"Harry Potter, but, you see..."  
  
"Harry Potter!" the close family of three chorused.  
  
"Eh?" Uncle Vernon managed to gurgle out.  
  
"Oh, wow! Harry Potter! On your lap even, hon!" Mrs. Chang exclaimed. Uncle Vernon just stared, utterly confused. And he didn't like being confused, especially if it was with something as unusual as his nephew Harry. 


End file.
